Hating Seagulls is Like Being Racist or Homophobic

Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy, their son, Desmond Shearwater, and their indoor cat, B.B. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.

Having worked with gulls for three nesting seasons, I think it is entirely correct to hate gulls, but only if you’ve worked with them. No one else is allowed to hate them. In Dawson’s seminal Birds of California he introduces the Western Gull thusly…

“Much that is good and all that is evil has gathered itself up into the Western Gull. He is rather the handsomest of the blue-mantled Laridae, for the depth of color in the mantle, in sharp contrast with the snowy plumage of back and breast, gives him an appearance of sturdiness and quality which is not easily dispelled by subsequent knowledge of the black heart within. As a scavenger, the Western Gull is impeccable. Wielding the besom of hunger, he and his kind sweep the beaches clean and purge the water-front of all pollution. But a scavenger is not necessarily a good citizen. Call him a ghoul, rather, for the Western gull is cruel of beak and bottomless of maw. Pity, with him, is a thing unknown; and when one of their own comrades dies, these feathered jackals fall upon him without compunction, a veritable Leichnamveranderungsgebrauchsgesellschaft. If he thus mistreats his own kind, be assured that this gull asks only two questions of any other living thing: First, “Am I hungry?” (Ans., “Yes.”) Second, “Can I get away with it?” (Ans., “I’ll try.”)”

A better age of natural history writing.

That said, I don’t actually hate them. They are born into a world that hates and punishes them, and it is hardly suprising they turn out like they do.

Dawson’s three volume Birds of California is full of wonder. I should really buy myself a set. We had one when I worked on the Farallons, and it was a source of constant joy. Here is a bit more, for another species…

“The Cassin Auklet seems incapable of controlling the force of its flight, and the wonder is that they are not every one of them dashed in pieces in a single night in their effort to locate their proper burrows. In this respect they remind on of nothing else so much as beetles or moths which come hurtling into the region of candle light, and without an instant’s pause for presumed necessary recovery, begin an animated search for an imaginary exit. This crach-and-crawl method seemed not exceptional but characteristic. It was especially noticeable in the paved area just outside our workroom doors. “We occupied an outbuilding of the light-keepers’ quarters.) Crash! announced the arrival of another food-laden wanderer from the unknown. The impact against the building invariably stunned the bird so that it fell to the ground, but immediately it began a frantic search, and as likely as not, before we could lay hands on it, it disappeared under a crack in the doorstep.”

There is nothing to hate about Seagulls, if people weren’t so sloppy and leave food garbage around, their cars might not get pooped on. What goes in must come out. “They really are not in the wrong and they are a very beautiful bird.

I think seagulls are beautiful creatures and I actually have a flock of them living with me and with a small donation of 40k I’m able to love them and let them live here. I wish sleeping with them would be legalised because it’s just not fair how beautiful these creatures are